


Almost Home

by Nemonus



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Everybody Lives, F/M, Gen, Happy suburban AU, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 09:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5285534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first Thanksgiving after the escape, Wash's sisters came to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Home

The first Thanksgiving after the escape, his sisters came to visit.

He had remembered who he was this morning, remembered that Connie and Tex had broken them all out of the Mother of Invention. Molly and Laura’s forms still glitched when they walked in, his brain insistent that Leonard Church didn’t have sisters. Thanksgiving was thesis papers on the dining room table and a small girl pushing microwaved potatoes and deli turkey around on her paper plate.

Wash wasn’t from America, wasn’t even from Earth, so there wasn’t any reason his sisters should or shouldn’t come to the holiday York and Carolina had insisted they have.

Carolina, that small girl -

Wash stopped clinging to the doorframe as if it was a spar at sea and offered to take Laura’s coat.

She hugged him brusquely, filling up his view with her dark hair. Molly, the youngest, had a wedding ring Wash hadn’t seen before. He had gotten the news during the project. He was sure.

York and Connie descended, taking coats, the smell of dinner following them in from the kitchen. Then it was him and Connie and Laura and Molly, standing at the bottom of the stairs by the peeling wallpaper and wondering where to begin.

Laura hugged him. He shut his eyes for a moment, opened them to see Molly smiling over her shoulder.

“It’s been so long, David,” Laura said when she let go.

Wash tried for words, stumbled. Connie captured Molly’s attention.

“How was your flight?”

“Also long.”

“Since you made corporal,” Laura said. “Then we got the transfers in the mail.”

“And you got the one that said,” Wash managed, “ that I wasn’t enlisted any more.”

The Freelancers had agreed to tell their families; Connie, after all, had defected in order to show the public what Freelancer had done.

Laura nodded. “Do you get veterans’s services?”

“Six of us are paying the rent.” He touched Connie’s shoulder. “This is Connie. She … we might be moving out together.”

There was never any need for a name for what the two of them were, or rather, too many names.

Laura rushed forward to grab Connie’s hands. “Oh, that’s so sweet. Take care of him.”

“She already has,” Wash said, smiling. The endearments loosened something in him: his sisters had been kind to him when he was younger; the worst they had ever done was not to step in.

Molly said, “So you were both part of that.”

Part of … that. Part of the experiments, the triumph and loss. He had been part of it as a soldier, not as a puppet master.

Wash nodded. Laura spoke —

Her face blurred, and he made an effort to remember, to pick ideas and traits out of the fog in his head. Laura - starship mechanic, a few towns away from their parents’ home.

“What?” Outside, street lights glowed like stars. He rubbed his hand through his hair, the gesture he had traded for snapping his fingers. There always had to be some sort of addiction to memory in his body.

“We heard on the news that someone had been performing illegal experiments on soldiers.” Her eyes were wide. She had probably looked the same way when she had been on the phone with their mother, who told her that David was coming back to civilian life, that David had moved in with some friends on Earth, that David was on the news you might have seen today. Did you see? Did you see? We got these forms in the mail from a chairman.

“Yeah,” Wash said. “That was … as accurate as it could have been.”

Laura’s whole face fell when she was concerned - her wide eyes turned liquid, her lips crooked. She caught Connie’s eye, and something there told her that Wash was all right - that the grief and shattered history of their home was reined in. She would have questions. She would possibly have charts of how much of their taxes had gone to Project Freelancer.

For now, she looked into Wash’s face as if making sure that he was still there.

Molly - had recently been married, used to work outside building trails. She snugged her hand against the crook of his elbow, rumpling his sweater. “Did you hurt them back?”

“She did,” Wash said immediately.

Molly drew back, looked him in the eyes. Seeing the fight in fifth grade, he was sure, but also the strange, clenched silences before it.

“I brought pie,” she said, her jaw tight.

“You can put it in the kitchen, if you can find counter space,” Wash said.

With the sound of running feet and a flapping scarf, York barreled out of the kitchen, perked up at the appearance of guests and having finally finished or paused what he had been making. “And am I pleased to meet you.” The barreling slowed to a ramble. “Wash's sisters? Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you. Did you mention pie?”

“‘Wash’?” Molly mouthed.

Wash did the introductions. York took them away, both almost hiding their urges to ask about him, another retired, ill-used super soldier.

“I had worse scenarios in mind,” CT said tightly, by way of asking Wash how he was.

Wash took her hands. Drew her closer to him and the couch and the coats and scarves piled on it, closer to the proof that his family had come from some other planet to prove to him that they existed and were thankful for things.

“She called me David,” he said, getting his arms around her shoulders while she snugged, confused but accepting, her arms around his waist. “She called me David, and I didn’t even hate that.”


End file.
